ABSTRACT
The Bengal’s mode of social cleavage and its political interface does not exist in a vacuum. Rather, what is happening in West Bengal is part of the wider structural design of the politics of communalism. This chapter establishes the concept of cultural misrecognition as a possible model to explain the contemporary mode of identity politics in India. It focuses on the communal issues linked with cattle-linked lynching, Delhi riots and shows how far and in what ways competitive communalism is growing. This chapter sums up the core themes of cultural misrecognition and shows how this mode of politics was defeated by service delivery-oriented politics in West Bengal and also in Delhi.
